FOREST PLANTING FOR PROFIT IN MASSA- 

 CHUSETTS. 



BY THEODORE F. BORST, BOSTOX. 



Abstract of au illustrated lecture delivered before the Society, 

 January 21, 190o. 



After briefly referring to the importance of forests and how 

 the indiscriminate cutting of the past has made it impossible for 

 nature to much longer supply our needs, Mr. Borst took up the 

 problem of showing where forests should be planted, how seed- 

 ling trees are raised in a nursery, how a young forest is properly 

 planted, and how a plantation shottld be tended for profitable 

 returns. Good profits from forest culture vvere shown. 



He said that it is a matter of common knowledge that prices 

 of all forest products, especially wood of the better kinds, have 

 been very rapidly rising, and as these advanced prices are occa- 

 sioned by a scarcity of desirable timber there is no reason to 

 believe that prices will ever be lower ; in fact, everything points 

 toward much higher prices in the ftiture. Just two weeks ago 

 the President of the United States, through an address before the 

 American Forest Congress held at Washington, called the atten- 

 tion of the American people to the grave problems now con- 

 fronting us by the rapid destruction of our forests. These 

 forests were once thought inexhaustible, but at this congress, as 

 never before, the leading interests depending itpon forest pro- 

 ducts, namely: the lumbermen, the railroads, the mining inter- 

 ests, paj^er manufacturers, the box and cooperage manufacturers, 

 the furniture manufacturers, and all woodworkers and users in 

 general, did through able representatives of their various interests 

 cry aloud their needs for wood materials. The area formerly 

 covered with valuable timber has been much reduced, and the 

 regrowth now taking place on other lands is upon culls left 

 standing in the lumbering of the past. As nature no longer will 



